True Sisters

February 20, 2012
In Mormon history, any mention of the Martin handcart company is almost invariably accompanied by the term “ill-fated,” as befits one of pioneer history’s most tragic blunders. In 1856, an immigrant band, hampered by poorly constructed handcarts and a late start to its 1,300-mile westward trek, was caught in a terrible blizzard in Wyoming that claimed the lives (or the fingers and toes) of scores of Mormon converts. Dallas (The Bride’s House; Prayers for Sale) tells the story of the Martin Handcart Company through the eyes of several fictional women characters, who come to life in the author’s imagination as real flesh-and-blood participants. Although the first half moves slowly, Dallas’s character exposition is strong, and the latter half becomes more gripping as the catastrophe unfolds. One shortcoming is the novel’s sometimes one-dimensional male characters, who are pompous, selfish, or weak. But the focus is on strong women and the beautiful relationships they can create even in impossible circumstances. As such, this is a memorable story.

April 1, 2012
A calamitous chapter in American history is illustrated by the intertwined tales of four women who survived it. The settling of the American West is full of stories, but one of its greatest tales of heroism and endurance is not well known. In the mid-1800s, Mormon leader Brigham Young instructed the followers of his new religion to leave their lives in the sinful Old World and travel to Zion, or Salt Lake, to what would one day be Utah. At his command, hundreds traveled to Iowa City, the westernmost point of the railroad, and constructed wooden handcarts, chosen for their economy, to make the 1,300-mile trek by foot. Despite the challenges--the wood was green and many, formerly city dwellers, were unfit for the journey--some groups traveled safely. Not so the Martin Company, 650 who set out in July 1856 to find ferocious heat, starvation and deadly winter storms before arriving. To illustrate this forgotten chapter, Dallas (The Bride's House, 2011, etc.) focuses on four women: Louisa, the adoring bride of a company leader; Anne, a non-Mormon who resents her convert husband for forcing her from an easy life in London; lovelorn Nannie, who travels to support her beloved, pregnant sister and brother-in-law; and Jessie, a self-reliant farm girl who chafes at the religion's strict rules. Together with a detailed cast of supporting characters, they bear and bury children and other loved ones, finding a kind of sisterhood and inner strength. They are further burdened (and bound) by the rampant sexism of the new faith, which encourages polygamy and views new women as "fresh fish." Dallas' vivid prose makes the journey's escalating hardships feel real, as Anne "no longer kept track of time or distance, just pushed the cart in a kind of daze, her mind as much a blur as the snow that fell." Readers enticed by the HBO program Big Love will be particularly interested in the origins of this insular community. This fact-based historical fiction, celebrating sisterhood and heroism, makes for a surefire winner.

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November 15, 2011

Dallas, who did such a lovely job with last year's The Bride's House, offers a tale of historical fiction inspired by Brigham Young's efforts to recruit Mormon converts by giving them handcarts they were then to wheel across the desert to Salt Lake City. For one of the last groups of converts leaving Iowa, the trek proved disastrous--but it did allow four women to bond in crucial ways. Solid for discussion groups.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2012
The dry facts of the nineteenth-century Mormon exodus from heartland America to a promised land in Utah are brutal, heart-wrenching, and often disturbing to modern sensibilities. Dallas offers a richly drawn fictional account of tragic true events. Spinning together the connected lives of four women who journey with a particularly ill-fated Mormon handcart group from Iowa City to Salt Lake City in 1856, Dallas breathes the sweet, aching details of life into a record fraught with finger-pointing and callous facts. European converts to the new religion of Mormonism gathered in midsummer that year, with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, to make the 1,300-mile walk, pushing poorly constructed handcarts the entire way. Among them are strong, sensible Ella Buck, disillusioned Anne Sully, dutiful Louisa Tanner, and clear-eyed Jessie Cooper, along with various members of their families. The intersections of these women's lives make up the bulk of this highly engaging, if often painful, tale. Dallas very ably fills in historical gaps about the all-too-real lives of Mormon women in this particular sliver of history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)